After years of “twist, lick and dunk,” Oreo wanted to stand for something less functional and be more emotional – to be about possibility and optimism. Wonderfilled was the first step in that direction; our way to reboot a cookie and connect folks to their sense of awe, in a cynical world. It was our new global platform and it was well received.

The Canadian cookie market is tough, competing mostly on price. Mom, our core customer, is trained to look for cookies on sale. And the category is getting even more competitive: private-label giant President’s Choice spent a year promoting their “Decadent” cookie’s anniversary, plus continued support of their Oreo knock-off “Eat the Middle First.” Moreover, they would be increasing their footprint with the addition of their newly acquired Shopper’s Drug Mart stores.

Many people think of Oreo as a “once-in-while, when it’s on sale” kind of indulgence. On the other hand, its ubiquity and longevity incline many others to not think of Oreo at all.Moreover, today’s mom is more sensitive about sugar – more skeptical of small indulgences (especially crème sandwich-style cookies).

We knew that if we wanted a sustained impact beyond our launch we needed to get Oreo (the authentic original) as a must have for Canadians – sale or not. We wanted to ensure Wonderfilled would be especially relevant, timely and resonant with Canadians’ daily lives. We knew we needed to find the local in the global to make sure Canadians knew Oreo was not only Wonderfilled, but that it was Wonderfilled for them.

Our Marketing budget was $598,000 including media & production.

b) Resulting Business Objectives

1) Grow Sales:

We wanted Mom to buy one more pack of Oreo cookies; which would equate to a 6.8% volume growth for 2014 (Lofty objective for a century old, low-interest, mature brand in a flat category).

2) Change Consumer Perception:

Mom needed to feel more open to Oreo in the cookie aisle; to buy out of love and to be a little less strict over nutritional concerns. To do this, we wanted to appeal to her sense of humanity, her sense of nostalgia, and to her patriotism by cheering for Canadian Olympians. Essentially, we just wanted her to like and remember us fondly next time she went grocery shopping.

A total budget of $598,000 meant a concentration on efficiency and impact for a short and focused window. Digital, social and earned media would need to play important roles in the campaign.

c) Annual Media Budget
$500,000 - $1 million

d) Geographic Area
National—English

Section III — STRATEGIC THINKINGa) Analysis and Insight

To take our global message to a local level, we looked to one of the most patriotic events: the Olympics. Canada’s ‘Canadian-ness’ would be at its highest, so it was the perfect time to define what Wonderfilled means to all of us.

Canadians are connected; celebrating and sharing moments they are proud of. They cherish small smiles, participating in the groundswell of global moments, as well as celebrating big patriotic wins. Oreo had an opportunity to be part of these very special Canadian moments, using real-time marketing to bring genuine presence and immediacy to the shared experience.

However, our real time marketing could not just drive fan engagement. We also needed to drive business results. We knew that by relating to an audience, we would gain permission to talk about the cookie and then earn the right to sell. With the multi-screen world of the Olympic audience, our message had to fit with a consumer watching on their couch, reading Oreo messages across devices, and sharing across their social networks.

Those messages? To remind us to see our world in the here and now, with open eyes and a curious heart, and to wonder. For Canadians, the Olympics are filled with real-time moments of hoping, wishing, dreaming…wondering. In many ways, a representation of what Wonderfilled is about, or, said simply:

“THE CANADIAN OLYMPIC SPIRIT IS WONDERFILLED”

b) Communication Strategy

Historically, our cookie competition has not paid much attention to Canadian patriotism, and with our exclusive sponsorship of the Olympics, we knew we could have a point of differentiation as the “Official Cookie of the Canadian Olympic Team”.

While a sponsorship alone may have been a way to advertise for share of wallet, it was hardly enough to claim share of Canadian hearts. We knew we had to approach the Olympics with a truly Canadian attitude in order to earn our local credibility. So, we turned our competitive lens not to other cookies but to other Olympic advertisers. The landscape would soon be bombarded with “quest for gold” messaging. While topically relevant, we felt it was “table stakes” and certainly did not adequately express the complete Canadian Olympic experience. (Most of all, it was not very Wonderfilled.) Conversely, the Canadian spirit is humble in nature; one that celebrates effort over wins, recognizes the role of a home team and global goodwill. It is about optimism and hope – notions we saw as complementary to Oreo Wonderfilled. So, we took the proverbial high road to elevate our cookie, build engagement and weave ourselves into the fabric of Canada.

Our creative communications centered on effort and sportsmanship. Athletes train, sacrifice and strive to do their best against all odds – often from a very early age, and sometimes, at the expense of their childhoods. However, we do it all in a distinctly Canadian way – making friends all over the world in Olympic villages and winning hearts with grace and humanity. Our animated Olympic commercial focused on our athletes; telling the story about how all the hard work and sacrifice is really worth it in the end. Although that doesn’t mean we can’t have fun doing it. So we continued the fun through our digital and social media showing what happens when we “wonder” a little more about things that happen (or could happen) in the Olympics.

c) Media Discussion

Our communications then launched just before the opening ceremonies, on February 3rd, 2014. We featured three weeks of Canadian Olympic Spirit across multiple channels:

Commercial: Airing on television, YouTube, social media and digital pre-roll, the Canadian spirit of the Olympics came to life in a musical animated story about what happens when you wonder if you could have a conversation with the child that decided to start dreaming about their Olympic moment. What would you say to them?

CBC Sponsorship: To successfully Wonderfill the Olympics for Canada, we went to the Canadian media home of the Olympics – the CBC – with communications across all CBC channels (TV, digital, mobile).

Brand Website: Oreowonderfilled.ca was our Canadian pride headquarters; the hub for all Olympic content, we drove downloads of the Mondelez corporate “Pride & Joy” mobile app, where Canadians would be rewarded with prizes alongside Team Canada.

Social Media: An Olympics-collaboration “nerve centre” was set up to capture the Canadian Olympic spirit in real time. Monitoring events and social media trends of Sochi as they happened, our social team seamlessly collaborated with several stakeholders (agency, brand, PR, legal, Canadian Olympic Committee and CBC) to publish both pre-planned and real-time content divided into three categories:

PROMOTIONAL: content with a focus on the Pride & Joy app and a drive to purchase the limited-edition cookie.

CONVERSATIONAL: content leveraging insights gleaned from trends and social listening around the Games. (#SochiSelfie, #Beardmode)

Historically, Facebook had been the only platform to be able to deliver a targeted Canadian message. We did not think this was enough for impact. So, we worked with Twitter Canada to be the first Canadian brand (and one of the first in the world) to use the Twitter narrowcasting feature, which transformed the global Oreo account into an outlet targeted to Canadians only.

Display Ads: We created digital display ads to boost campaign awareness and drive traffic to the Wonderfilled website in order to further expand and enhance the consumer experience with the Oreo brand.

Our Olympics work got people talking more online about Oreo than before. In fact, we were a leader among Canadian Olympic campaigns:

133MM Facebook impressions on an only $12K media spend [footnote 9].

Oreo tweeted its way to 1st toppling Twitter Canada’s fan engagement benchmarks (cost per engagement and follower rates) and bested all historical benchmarks for @Oreo – not just for a few days but for the entire Olympics [footnote 10].

Oreo’s annual media spend was flat vs prior year. However investment in 2014 has been re-shifted to accommodate Olympics support earlier in the year resulting in a spending increase of $230,000 in the month of February (vs Feb 2013).

In 2013 we launched “Wonderfilled” campaign in May resulting in a +6.1% [footnote 15]growth in consumption dollars. In 2014, we launched Olympics campaign in February resulting in a +18.6% sales growth that month [footnote 16], and +16% sales growth in Q1, which business is still holding up to date [footnote 17].

Pricing:

No new above average /significant discounting was done. The percentage sold on ad remained flat in Q1 2014 vs. Q1 2013 [footnote 18].

Distribution Changes:

Total Distribution Points were up 10.9% in Q1 which can primarily be attributed to the launch of the limited edition Pride & Joy cookie. Although distribution increased, this increase is on par with what MDLZ would typically see for the launch of an In & Out SKU [footnote 19].

Unusual Promotional Activity:

We had a call out to the corporate Mondelez Pride & Joy app on-pack, but there was no promotional activity specific to Oreo during the campaign.